I recently took to Facebook to explain why my family and I are self-quarantining. It’s not just like the flu. But many people disagree. Many, though not all, are “MAGA-people.” Middle-American types who trust Donald Trump and Rush Limbaugh. Where are they getting their talking points? Some of it is from Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, etc. (the son of the President of the United States of America for example)
But today I realized that there was “mainstream media” validation out there. On February 13th Vox/Recode published “No handshakes, please”: The tech industry is terrified of the coronavirus. I didn’t read beyond the headline, because I didn’t take the piece seriously.
Here is what I assumed was going on: the editors at Recode were settling some scores with “tech-bros” with whom they had an adversarial relationship. The journalist who wrote the piece was almost certainly just a pawn in this game of middle-school level social competition and sniping. Underlings know what they editors want, and they’ll produce it. Trust me. I’ve been the target of this myself. Much of the media is dishonest manipulation and an expression of power. If you don’t know that, you’re an idiot (to be frank).
Ten years ago the tech-press was just a marketing and publicity arm of Silicon Valley. That changed with a substantial number of the tech-journalism elite becoming skeptical and antagonistic toward the megalomaniacal and somewhat crazy tendencies of the tech-elite (these tendencies are objectively true, though they are features, not bugs!). Much of the antagonism is now masked with social justice and Lefty politics, but ultimately a lot of this is personal. Journalists have power and influence, but not too much money and security.
They think they’re “punching-up” so it’s OK.
Today people are surfacing this Vox/Recode piece again to settle some scores. So I reread the whole thing to be fair. This part shocked me:
“That’s like saying you can’t come in if you visited Chicago because of the flu outbreak in New York City,” the employee told Recode [find someone to say what you want to say -Razib].
Some [“Some”, who? -Razib] have criticized comparing the coronavirus to the flu because it has a far higher fatality rate and that it distracts from the new virus’s severity. But the fact remains that, so far, the flu has impacted far more people [No shit. Exponents. It’s true. It’s disturbing -Razib]. The CDC estimates that 10,000 people have died from the flu this season, with some 19 million people in the US having experienced flu illness. Data from the CDC suggests that the flu is a greater threat to Americans than the coronavirus. Yet unlike the flu, the coronavirus is new and not well understood, which makes it especially scary to the public, including Silicon Valley’s elite.
What. The. Fuck.
This was, and is, technically true. But we all know this is misleading. In mid-February, there was some uncertainty and lack of clarity. Being cautiously skeptical would have been fine. But the tone of this piece is not sober. On Twitter, the tech-journalism elite made their views more nakedly clear. The “tech-bros” are weird and nutty. The coronavirus alarmism was an opportunity to get at them. This was middle school. Not objective analysis.
To be clear, I’m angrier at Rush Limbaugh, Donald Trump Jr., Donald Trump, and Sean Hannity. People need to be calm. They don’t need to go crazy. But it was clear a long time ago this was worse than the flu, with high downside risk. Now many MAGA-boomers are now digging into the idea that it’s not as bad as the flu (and making life decisions that are agonizing for their children, like going on vacation because it’s cheap and no lines in airports).
Vox has some great journalists. I probably read everything Julia Belluz writes. These are big organizations, and there isn’t always clear communication or accountability. People differ in their opinions. But let’s be obvious what was happening above: some people within the organization were using “objective journalism” to settle scores. That’s what some journalism is. Now they’re trying to pretend like it didn’t happen. It happened. We will remember.
Put that into a “card-stack” somewhere.
Maybe you knew this, but Balaji Srinivasan called out Recode on this BEFORE the article came out, and was mocked for it.
He documents the exchange here. The reporter called him for the article, and he publically predicted it was a tech bros hit piece, was mocked on twitter for predicting that by the author and then by Kara Swisher, and then his prediction came true. Swisher chiming if of course the big tell that management decided to do the piece. I’m somewhat feeling bad for the author, who will have this follow them forever. But public health is life or death in this case, so hard to be too sympathetic. Anyway, more data for what you already knew, in case you hadn’t seen it.
https://medium.com/@balajis/citations-for-the-recode-handshake-debunking-b2751adc7e69
I don’t know if you can make a left right thing out of this. The conservative Republican Governor of Ohio banned gatherings of more than 100 people and shut down the public schools on Thursday.
https://www.dispatch.com/news/20200314/why-ohio-is-leading-us-response-to-coronavirus
The left liberal Democrat Mayor of New York is furiously resisting demands that he close the New York City Schools.
I agree that Trump dragged his feet, but that was mostly rhetorical. He seems to be on board now. OTOH, the President’s powers are very limited. Mayors and governors can shut down schools and sports arenas. The President can’t.
The response of the CDC and the FDA has been problematic, see the article I link in the next post. The problem is not the White House or appointed high officers. It is the deep state tenured bureaucrats who insist doing everything by their version of the book in order to protect themselves and not to solve the problem.
“‘It’s Just Everywhere Already’: How Delays in Testing Set Back the U.S. Coronavirus Response: A series of missed chances by the federal government to ensure more widespread testing came during the early days of the outbreak, when containment would have been easier.” By Sheri Fink and Mike Baker • March 10, 2020 • https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/10/us/coronavirus-testing-delays.html
Federal and state officials said the flu study could not be repurposed because it did not have explicit permission from research subjects; the labs were also not certified for clinical work. … On Monday night, state regulators told them to stop testing altogether.
the C.D.C.’s … released criteria for deciding which individuals should be tested for the virus … so strict that the sick man in the Seattle area who had visited Wuhan did not meet it. Still, worried state health officials pushed to get him checked, and the C.D.C. agreed. Local officials sent a sample to Atlanta and the results came back positive. …
… “If you want to use your test as a screening tool, you would have to check with F.D.A.,” … But the F.D.A. could not offer the approval because the lab was not certified as a clinical laboratory under regulations established by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, a process that could take months. …
The C.D.C. had designed its own test as it typically does during an outbreak. … But when the C.D.C. shipped test kits to public labs across the country, some local health officials began reporting that the test was producing invalid results.
The C.D.C. promised that replacement kits would be distributed within days, but the problem stretched on for over two weeks. ..
The Association of Public Health Laboratories made what it called an “extraordinary and rare request” of Dr. Stephen Hahn, the commissioner of the F.D.A., asking him to use his discretion to allow state and local public health laboratories to create their own tests for the virus. …
Dr. Hahn responded two days later, saying in a letter that “false diagnostic test results can lead to significant adverse public health consequences” and that the laboratories were welcome to submit their own tests for emergency authorization.
But the approval process for laboratory-developed tests was proving onerous. … Dr. Alex Greninger, an assistant professor at the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle, said … that at one point the agency required him to submit materials through the mail in addition to over email. …
Later that day, the investigators and Seattle health officials gathered with representatives of the C.D.C. and the F.D.A. to discuss what happened. The message from the federal government was blunt. “What they said on that phone call very clearly was … Stop testing.”
On a phone call the day after the C.D.C. and F.D.A. had told Dr. Chu to stop, officials relented, but only partially … They would allow the study’s laboratories to test cases and report the results only in future samples. … They were not to test the thousands of samples that had already been collected.
But on Monday night, state regulators, enforcing Medicare rules, stepped in and again told them to stop until they could finish getting certified as a clinical laboratory, a process that could take many weeks.
incompetence transcends left-right. this is major institutional failure.
otoh, here is what i said on a private chan: trump did the “it’s ok, it’s ok, it’s ok, it’s ok. OK NOW YOU CAN FREAK OUT.” wrong way to go about it. should have gradually increased alarm imo
The intransigence of the Federal bureaucracy is astounding. We have given them a great deal of power and they have misused it in the most predictable ways.
Trump did not create the problem, indeed he, more than anyone else, is hamstrung by it. His short coming is that he does not understand it and cannot gather forces that could combat it. His intelligence does not comprehend institutions and he such a terrible and shortsighted executive that he has utterly failed to build a team.
OTOH, we are where we are and we have the choices we have. We can vote Trump out of office for his manifest short comings, but the old white dude who replaces him will be a champion of the deep state, not a critic.
The primary in my state is this week. One of my neighbors put up a sign that says: “Everybody Sucks — We’re Screwed — 2020”
You can buy one too: https://www.amazon.com/VIBE-INK-Everybody-Screwed-Political/dp/B07SKZDK2G
Razib: I see you are up and at the computer. Can you post here your explanation of why you and your family are self-quarantining?
It did not get on to your RSS feed.
I would like more information on the accuracy of various nCoV19 tests.
How was the original CDC test, which apparently had technical problems, different from the WHO-recommended one? Was the CDC test (trying to be) more rigorous? How rigorous is whatever tests are being done in China?
Is it possible the CDC wanted a full PCR workup on every sample, while places like China are diagnosing largely on symptoms, or with otherwise less rigorous methods?
There are probably scores of people in the US dying everyday with “high fever and persistent cough”. With so few (for now) nCoV19 cases, the false positive rate for any test is important to know.
Separately, does anyone know of a single source with detail on every nCoV19 death in the USA or European countries? I’d like to see how many were otherwise healthy people younger than, say 65.
My family and I are also self-quarantining, except one major exception. More on that below. It’s largely to do our part in flattening the infection curve, so that vulnerable people would have ICU beds and live. I’m not worried about me or my family (except for that exception below).
Now a little personal reveal. My wife is the head of a healthcare facility in a major metro area (that is in the beginning stage of the pandemic). I cannot say more due to a myriad of legal or ethical reasons. All I can say is that she and I share Mr. Khan’s concerns (and we went from skeptic to alarmed in about a 2-week period as we got to see actual data from China and reports from Italy and South Korea).
There is no need, repeat no need to panic, but the public needs to take this seriously and engage in large scale social distancing to slow the spread. That IS going to make a big difference in the severity and determine whether 5,000 people die or 500,000 (or 500 vs 5 million).
Razib & Twinkie:
The term quarantine is usually held to mean that authorities have imposed a place and period of isolation on people who have arrived from elsewhere or have or have been been exposed to contagious disease are placed.
My sense is that what you are doing is voluntary social isolation in order to avoid infection not in order to to prevent yourselves from infecting others. Is that true?
The initial reportage in the first half of that recode article seemed fine.
The problem is in the commentary/conclusion towards the end
“There’s an essential tension between public health and individual freedom,” said Deresinski. “And that’s where the balance has to be found.”
I have seen other people also say something similar in concept. That is they approve of an action (to fight against the pandemic) only if it aligns with their preferred ideological mode of action
https://twitter.com/kavita_krishnan/status/1238313186576576513?s=20
In the European press, I saw lots of such articles claiming that what it now called COVID-19 is objectively less dangerous than the common flu and that there are only psychological reasons why some people think the opposite (something new any scary).
There is no perfect correlation with the political orientation of the journalists who wrote such things – there are people with all political orientations who have problems with exponential developments -, and I don’t have any quantitative data, but my impression is that it was mainly left liberal ones who downplayed the novel coronavirus and often even „debunked“ the fear of COVID-19 as one more of these irrationalities enlightened people (who, for instance, know that more people die of the flu) should either ignore or fight.
@Razib: Sometimes its better to see the bigger picture and look beyond the USA. The very same “arguments” of the flu being as worse or worse being repeating throughout the Western world. The whole issue was downplayed and a lot of middle class people just didn’t wanted it to be true, some still ignore the facts, even though Italy is now a complete mess and shows what can happen.
This is not about some journalists having an issue here or there, this is a much bigger, almost global phenomenon of two or more views on reality as such. You can repeat the same thing with demography, migration, economy etc.
There are “alarmists” and there are “appeasers” and many people in between. In the case of Covid-19 a large portion of the mainstream media, especially those related to the middle class and economic interests, repeated that worse than the epidemic is the panic. The panic is ought to be worse for the economy and society. Only hypochondriac and anxious people care too much and do more than washing their hands. That’s still a position I was confronted with in friends, colleagues and some relatives, like my father in law who insisted on Corona virus being less serious than the flu, even though he is in the highest risk category for a bad outcome if getting infected.
I repeat its like it is with a general optimistic and appeasing view on many issues, like migration, social cohesion, violence, conflicts, demographics, social justice and economic policy. There are a lot of people which just prefer to ignore problems, even if they pile up, as long as they can, and proceed as usual. That’s not just bad intention, that’s how they are. They couldn’t live on like they do, with the same ideology, with the same perspective on their life and the world, if they would question their basic appeasing optimism.
If you warn early, you are just “a troublemaker” for them and better shut up. If reality hits them too, they will change their mind, but refuse to accept the early warnings were justified and they themselves are guilty for an even worse outcome than predicted. Its their non-anticipatory personality and behaviour. They don’t want to change their mind and behaviour, their routine.
At the most basic level, they lack “rational thinking and behavious” on bigger issues than they do experience in day to day life. They might be more rational behaving otherwise, in their daily routine, but they miss the bigger picture and are unable to integrate abstract knowledge and information in their “normal life perspective”.
Possibly, I don’t know the right people but I don’t know anyone who is taking this lightly. Most of my family and friends are reluctant Trump supporters, if only because there doesn’t seem to be any saner alternative. We are most likely taking the same precautions as anyone else.
Since most media have abandoned even the pretense of being objective it has become increasingly difficult to distinguish between propaganda and fact. The virus is dangerous, but that doesn’t stop many from using it for political ends, both Democrats and Republicans.
However, those of us with some remaining critical thinking skills, wherever we are on the political spectrum, are still able to make reasonable decisions.
The ones trying to score political points are doing a disservice to everyone. When I see claims that a group of people don’t believe in science simply because they disagree with the reigning orthodoxy or that Democrats are trying to kill us so they can win the election, it tells me that whoever is making such claims is no longer a trustworthy source of information.
I don’t appreciate seeing things like, “Republicans are the stupid party” when there is obviously plenty of stupid to go around.
Let’s try to be the ones who avoid that type of rancor so we can focus on fact and the common good.
I worry that this sort of thing gets written because its’s what gets clicks. It got you to go back and read it again after all and I’ve seen other people sharing it too recently to make fun of it. I worry that it’s the clickbate like like that pays partially ends up paying the salaries of the better writers and that except for places with expensive paywalls like The Economist this is just what we have to put up with.
Adrian E.: “but my impression is that it was mainly left liberal ones who downplayed the novel coronavirus and often even „debunked“ the fear of COVID-19 as one more of these irrationalities”
My suspicion is that are the opinion makers aligned with the party-in-power (right in US, left in Portugal, liberals in France…) that tend to devaluate the danger and to say that is “alarmism”.
Slightly OT but related: Jon Haidt’s model that Conservatism all about a Purity basis related to disgust/disease concerns not looking so tight right now? Plausible when its the Right worrying about the spread of AIDS and such, and the Left reassuring society that everything is under control and no need to impinge on anyone’s personal freedom, less so atm.
It is above my paygrade to comment, but it seems to me that after this Wuhan virus has been around for 3-5 years it will not be any more dangerous than the common flu. However, the problem this year is that it can overwhelm the health care systems. I am one boomer on record that says that the ventilators and such need to be available for a 10 year old with a punctured lung rather than for someone like me.
@ Miguel
Other than Razib, there are no opinion makers in the US who are aligned with the right.
As I mentioned earlier, consolidation in healthcare has hit rural areas particularly hard in the past decade. This article is very good about describing the plight of a rural hospital:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/well-improvise-a-resource-starved-rural-hospital-steels-itself-for-coronaviruss-arrival/2020/03/14/a724d1ac-6604-11ea-acca-80c22bbee96f_story.html
Hospitals have been trying to build stockpiles of supplies, but distributors have rationed them since late January. And that rationing has tightened dramatically in the past week.
Vox/recode sure screwed up.
The sentence Razib highlights, “Data from the CDC suggests that the flu is a greater threat to Americans than the coronavirus” is hyperlinked in the original Vox post. That link then goes to NYTimes, but the NYTimes article is itself updated to a date that postdates Vox. So I went to the Wayback Machine and got the original NYTimes article. It in no way supports the Vox sentence. Here it is for posterity: https://web.archive.org/web/20200211092732/https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/world/asia/china-coronavirus-contain.html
To put my spin on Razib’s statement, Vox can take 0.1% of the blame for the pit that the US is in, and Trump can take 99.9% of the blame.
Essays about the utter incompetence: https://americanmind.org/features/the-coronacrisis-and-our-future-discontents/